Using RT-30 Triggers with the SPD-SX

Hey guys, hope you're all doing well! Welcome back, and if you're new here welcome to the blog! This post is going to dive in to setting up Roland RT-30 triggers with the Roland SPD-SX sample.

Here's a quick demo of the kind of thing you can get going!

My Brief History

I picked up my SPD-SX in 2014 and it was probably the most expensive pice of gear I owned at the time! I did have a Roland PD-85 dual-zone pad which I'd been using but I have always wanted to try adding on some trigger on to my acoustic drums. COVID lockdown (once again!) gave me the opportunity to try some new things out! I picked up an RT-30K and an RT-30HR used of course - c'mon you should know me by now! - to have some fun with. I also wanted to try out splitting the 2 stereo trigger inputs on the back of the SPD-SX but I haven't got round to that yet. Anyway, let's dive in to it.  

The triggers I’m using are the RT-30K on the kick and the RT-30HR on the snare. HR stands for Head & Rim which means it’s a dual zone trigger and you can trigger sounds from both those areas of the drum. Before I purchased this I had wondered what sound a rimshot would produce, and I can confirm it triggers only the rim. Fascinating!    

What You’ll Need

So you need the triggers of course, as well as the SPD-SX. If you’re buying these new you get everything you need in the box. But if like me you buy them used you also need some 1/4” cables, the ones with a right angle connection at one end are best as it gets the cable out of the way of the drums. You can connect up to 4 singe zone triggers and if you’re doing that you will need some Y connectors on the back of the SPD-SX to split the stereo inputs. I’m hoping to pick up one more trigger and I would be using this to split an input for both the Kick and a Tom trigger. You can see some of these splitters fro drum-tec that look the business (here). To set up the triggers just tighten the triggers on to the rims, plug the cables into the triggers and into the trigger inputs on the back of the SPD and that’s it. Now let's jump over to the SPD-SX and show you how to set up the trigger settings and change the sounds on there.

SPD-SX Set Up

First thing you can check is just to hit the drum you’re triggering and make sure the red light on the front of the SPD flashes on. This shows that it’s reading the signal, if this doesn’t light up double check your connections. Now to dive into the settings. We want to go to

MENU - SETUP - TRIG IN 

Input Mode lets you choose between a dual trigger or 2 single zones.

Trigger Type lets you specify which trigger or pad you’re using.      

To change the sound of the triggers it’s just like any pad, we go to;

MENU - PAD 

And you can either cycle left and right or just hit the triggered drum to select it.

Outro

So that wraps it up for this one. I was impressed with how plug and play these triggers are, I had read some reviews saying people needed to tweak a lot of settings but I’m just using the default setting which work great. I love how accurate these triggers are and that the kick trigger fits over the Evans EMAD that was a great move by Roland. I'm going to do some experimenting and figure out the best way to use these triggers dynamically so stay tuned for that.

Thanks for hanging out

So stay safe, and  I’ll see you in the next one

Bob